


To the End

by orphan_account



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Black Family, Death Eater ceremony, Death Eaters, First War with Voldemort, Gen, Loyalty, MWPP Era, Violence, becoming a Death Eater, graphic description of violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-12
Updated: 2014-06-12
Packaged: 2018-02-04 10:42:49
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,328
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1776208
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Rare it is to say you are someone that heard the Dark Lord speak in warm tones; the Dark Lord, whose only lovers are genocide and slaughter. Nevertheless, and unless my ears do not betray me, his voice indeed sounds like a lover’s." -- The night Regulus becomes a Death Eater.</p>
            </blockquote>





	To the End

**Author's Note:**

> Another 2008 fic, again edited. That was my juvenile idea of how one becomes a ~Death Eater. Oh, Regulus. /pets the boy and wraps him up in a blanket/ I'm sure he needs some more blankets, so if you've got some, give 'em here. He can use those. Poor, stupid, brave boy. Why do I love thee so much?
> 
> Oh, right. Heed the warnings, guys. 
> 
> (Also, younger self, picking titles from song lyrics, you were already quite creative back then, weren't you? /facepalms/)

to the last parade  
when all the parties fade  
and the choice you made  
to the end. 

my chemical romance—to the end

__  
  


  
“Do you accept me as your master?”

“Yes.”

“Do you swear to follow my biddings, unconditionally?”

“Yes.”

I kneel in front of him, my back bowed in an arc. Through my fringe I allow my eyes to glance up at him, my head raised ever so slightly. There he is: from fingers to face, all stark white flesh, surreal against the blackness of his cloak. He has thick dark hair, and his brown eyes bear a glint of red inside them, dangerously still as they gaze over the hooded figures surrounding us. There’s a kind of gauntness to his body that reminds me of a skeleton’s frame, but there are traces in his face and a grace in the angle of his jaw that remind of a decadent, lost handsomeness. When his eyes fall on me at last, I quickly drop my head.

“Will you do whatever I command?”

“Yes.”

“By all means?" 

“Yes." 

My voice doesn’t waver once. I can control the recurring trembling well enough.

“Then straighten.”

I rise slowly. I was informed he thinks ill of quick, hasty movements or any similar behaviour likely to stem from uncertainty or fear, for he values neither in his followers. He picks only those that are fierce, dangerous, and calculating, those whose blood is cold and dark, like a stale, sick lake. Those that don’t twice about loyalty.

“Look at me.”

I raise my head more. He is taller than me. Brown eyes meet mine, causing my breath to hitch; instead of black, his pupils are red.

He fixes his gaze on my eyes. I try hard not to think too much.

“Regulus Arcturus Black...”

I am expected to nod, and so I do. By acknowledging my name from his lips, I am to acknowledge, that, from now on, not only my name belongs to him: like this, I give my entire being, body, mind, and soul into his mastery.

(Briefly I wonder whether he claims the name of Black to be his, too. I don’t know how I would react, if he did that.

This is about me, not about my family.

I alone am his servant, and no one else.)

“Heir of the Noble and Most Ancient House of Black,” he says, every word spoken slowly, pronounced carefully. I cannot tell if the words hold praise or contempt. “It is an honour to welcome you here, in our small, quaint circle.”

“My Lord.” My voice is loud and formal, my face a mask. I give another bow, making myself smaller before him. (Father always reminded me of how physical inferiority suggests a lower status. I am inferior to him, in size and in power, and openly recognising my own inferiority is solely a means to gain his trust.) “The honour and pleasure is all mine.”

“Ah, is that so?” He keeps looking into my eyes. His voice holds coldness, and a hint of amusement. “I wonder...” he begins slowly with a dramatic sigh. There is an actual smile on his face, thin lips drawn apart into a wide, horrific curve. The utter apathy of it is a sight as terrifying as nothing I have seen before. “I wonder what the _actual_ heir thinks of you joining us.”

If he had hoped to catch me by surprise, he failed. Before I came here, Mother made sure I was prepared—and even though I am still young, I am more familiar with the mechanics of politics than those of emotions.

“My brother has chosen his side,” I hear myself say, words tinged with studied coolness, “and I have chosen mine.”

“Did you, now.” His fingers trace the sardonic twist of his mouth. “This affair does not please me, Regulus.”

His constant staring unnerves me. I remind myself not to show any weakness—anything but that. This is a challenge, in which he prods at the soft places of my self to test my reaction.

I stand straighter, stiffening my spine. It is time to change tactics. Perhaps it’s wiser to present myself as stronger so he would have no reason to doubt me. The Death Eaters around us must have noticed the change in my stance and the mockery in his words, because they start to laugh quietly, amused little chuckles likes snakes’ hissing rustling through their rows. Silently they’re saying that this is what they’re here for: to see a macabre show of another minion (un)willingly giving his mind to the Dark Lord.

“If I may object, my Lord.” I breathe in. The inhalation feels thin, feels frail. “My brother has forsaken his claim on the title ‘heir’.”

“This is what you say,” he replies coldly. “Again: I am not pleased. Your family may be superior to many others present here—indeed, it is probably the oldest—but even despite that, I have to remark that your brother—”

“He is not my brother.” The words are out before a thought has even begun to form. I can merely stare at my own shocked, pallid face reflected in those eyes of his. The momentary blankness of my mind makes me decide to press on—trouble is already caused. I must improvise, and I surprise myself with my next words. My heart lurches fearfully; I detachedly wonder when I have developed such a foolish sense of nerve. “And, most humbly, my Lord, I ask you to disregard him. I am here to offer myself to you as a tool for you to use however you see fit. The affairs of my family are mine; it is a pettiness you need not concern yourself with.”

As I finish speaking, the surrounding laughter ceases, abruptly. For a moment I cherish the uncanny silence. I feel their eyes on me, all of them, hostile, despising. Some of them would not hesitate to murder me right here in order to punish me for stepping out of line.

I have to suppress a sneer; such hypocrites, the lot of them. They can’t quite hide the shocked astonishment by coughing or averting their eyes. The air is thick with their shame, with their shame of feeling what they do. Fear. Fear, thick and disarming. Fear of him, fear of what he might do. Of what he _will_ do.

But for now, their wonder is greater. I suppose they they’ve never done this before, interrupting him, doing what is clearly forbidden; none of them ever have.

And I shouldn’t have, either.

The Lord does nothing else but step closer still, closer, until I can sense the heat of his body. It’s a surprise: I imagined his skin to be as cold as a corpse’s. Stunned, I suddenly realise how unsteady my breathing has become. In comparison to his, slow and inaudible, it is downright crude.

I cannot bear his gaze anymore; I foolishly close my eyes. My breathing is a deafening catastrophe in my ears.

 _Mistake, mistake_ , a voice in my head screams, suddenly. _Mistake_. But I do not, cannot, listen—it takes everything I have to suppress the quaking of my shoulders, to withstand the wobbliness of my legs.

The blackness behind my eyelids is bliss, allowing me to delve into my thoughts for a brief moment.

(I could attempt an excuse. Say it was stupid, foolhardy, silly thing to do; that I don’t deserve to be his servant; that please, please, please, may he not excuse it, just this once, it will never happen again; I am young, and foolish; all this excitement, all this anxiety—)

There are a lot of things I could say, could do, in an attempt to compensate.

There are a lot of things I could say, could do, to try and gain his forgiveness.

But Blacks do not apologize.

We never take back what we say.

By now, it has gone completely still. There are no sounds anymore, not even the frailest breathing, to hide what cannot be hidden—the others stare at us openly, unashamedly, the atmosphere thickening with an obscene kind of anticipation that emanates from their bodies. They wait for him to react, and they are children with greedy eyes and greedy hands in this mindless crowd, waiting for candy like they are good, well-behaved children whose anticipation shows in the saliva pooling in their mouths. Instead, their anticipation is the mad bloodlust sliding slickly, sickly, through their veins.

(It is revolting; it is beneath me, all of this. But I cannot... must not back out.

 _Cannot_.)

I open my eyes, and as I do, it is to him speaking. Speaking a single word.

Rare it is to say you are someone that heard the Dark Lord speak in warm tones; the Dark Lord, whose only lovers are genocide and slaughter. Nevertheless, and unless my ears do not betray me, his voice indeed sounds like a lover’s. I can picture his tongue rolling to the roof of his mouth, slowly curling and uncurling around the word like a lover’s embrace, cherishing every movement of his lips as they stretch around the word, enjoying the feeling of every syllable to the fullest; until at last it leaves his mouth, his lips, to be spoken softly, warmly. One word, a single word only. His only joy, his only love.

“ _Crucio_.”

White thunder tears my vision apart, and something implodes in the back of my head. I fall to my knees, the bones of my knees hitting the earth forcefully. My body makes another bow, though this time involuntarily and nothing even close to graceful. There is a noise as my forehead collides with his shoe, as my hands start to scratch at the earth in the vain attempt to hold onto something. Not soon after, my fingernails split, tearing. The shock invades my body like countless razor blades invading flesh, ripping my limbs apart and cleanly separating muscle from skin. The pain is so overwhelming and omnipresent, so _absolute_ , that every thought evades me. It’s not the kind of pain you experience when your mother told you not to touch the oven and you did. It’s not like it’s something you expect (though you do). It’s not cutting your thumb open by chance, nor is it hitting your head accidentally at the headboard. It’s not expectation, or chance, or accident.

This is the pain of precision, of intent: of a butcher having mastered the art of skinning, and revelling, delighting in it. This is the pain of purpose, of manipulation. The pain of torturing someone into apathy.

It begins in your fingernails and toenails, spreading into every surrounding pore; it lays itself over your skin like a second layer of knives, to get underneath the flesh to peel it from the bones from the inside out. It scratches at your muscles and veins with claws until your skin is off; it rams its fangs into the fibres of your muscles, sucks out the blood and leaves you crawling, bleeding, broken until you are completely stripped to the bone, a skeleton wishing for death. Even then the pain stabs at your bones. It keeps stabbing at you until it breaks your bones into pieces, until the pieces are ground into splinters, until the splinters are ash to be swept away by the wind into oblivion.

This pain blossoms into perfection as he murmurs the word a second time. I’m outside of my body, and the pain I suffer is not a physical pain anymore. There is only anguish, running like poison through me instead of blood. There are no words to describe this. I lose control. My chest tightens. Tears run down my face. I raise my arms, slam them down to the earth. I scratch with my fingers at the ground, and something splits. A slow, ugly crack. A paralysing sound. I move my arms in the jerky, uncontrolled motions of raising and slamming them down again, up and down, up and down, until I can’t anymore, until I begin scratching with the bleeding stumps of raw flesh, where my fingernails used to be, at the ground. The pain is so consuming it feels almost numb. There is no air.

 _Crucio_ is there to make you lose your mind. To scream out things you would never say. To make you humiliate yourself.

To manipulate.

A gurgle escapes my lips, and in the midst of this, I realise that this is what he wants: he wants me to scream. He wants me to betray all I know. Wants me to become mindless, so he can rule over me entirely, utterly.

And he is the Dark Lord, He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, and everyone shall either fear or love him, but whatever it is they do, they will despair. He is terrible and powerful and mighty, possesses skills that put those of Dumbledore to shame, and he is dark and cruel and twisted.

He is Voldemort; Lord Voldemort; and I see his triumphing gaze through hated, shameful tears, through the haze of bitterness and respect, and I know I will not give this to him.

Not this.

I will give myself to him, but I will not give him my family. I will not betray my name.

He wants me to scream, he wants to rule over me; but you cannot rule over a Black. Never. In no way. No one.

Not now. Not like this.

And not even him.

I would rather choose to die.

And as I press my lips together, there is a terrible throbbing in my throat, burning down my windpipe. All I want to do is to open my mouth and scream, scream, _scream_ , to inhale oxygen and make that terror of pain go away, _go away, I do not want this anymore, it hurts—_

In a frantic attempt to remain silent I lower my face fully to the ground, tasting dirt and grass as I bite down, sinking my teeth into the earth—the only choice I have to keep myself from shrieking with the pain.

My hands, bruised and bloody, continually hit the ground in a vain attempt to regulate the pain. Earth and dirt slip into my mouth. I cannot prevent licking at it without control, my mouth gone wild and shaky. I pant heavily as I inhale nothing, the earth and grass sticking to the insides of my cheeks. It makes me choke, this lack of air, and I try to breathe but there is earth and grass and dirt only, and it gets into my throat as I try to swallow, and then I choke again—

—and I think _this, this is how I will die. This is how I will die,_ when suddenly—

suddenly, it all stops. Suddenly, it all stops, and all of it is over.

I dimly register him kneeling in front of me. He takes my chin into his hands and looks at my swollen face. A moment passes in which he merely stares at my red, unfocused eyes, as if searching for something. Then he speaks strange sounding words, and… there is no more pain. There is no more pain, and my body is blissfully cool, numb, like ice laid over a burn.

I don’t know what he has done, but the pain is gone. That’s all I care for, in this second.

“My L—” I begin, croaking.

“Don’t speak,” he commands. When he stands up, it’s a graceful movement. “I have not allowed you to speak. But you will rise, now.”

My body moves on its own accord. I am too tired to wonder. The pain is replaced with such a profound heaviness I find it rather wondrous I have not fallen asleep yet.

“Step closer. Good. That is good.” He turns around to the other Death Eaters, which are frozen to their spots, staring at us. “Step forward, Bellatrix. You are his witness.”

And there she is, panting slightly, pale and terribly beautiful, Bellatrix. She comes to us, chin jutted out in pride, lashes lowered longingly. “It is an honour, my Lord.”

“So it should be,” he replies, words so disgustingly satisfied. “After all, I have never before had someone so courageous. Foolish, but courageous like no other. He deserves appreciation; his sense of loyalty is one that puts most of yours to shame.”

My stomach lurches with icy cold shock, the first thing I feel… after. I try to swallow, but before I do, I realise that I am about to swallow dirt again. I choke and cannot help but spit out the earth and dirt.

“I see, you are shocked, Regulus.” His voice sounds soft now and there is an ugly sort of contentment in his tone. “Indeed, I can see into your mind. I have known what you were thinking, all along.” He pauses to let the words soak in. “But it is not of importance now. Come here.”

My body, again, moves without my volition. It’s as though I were in his mastery already, without even having gone through the entire ritual. I catch a look of my fingernails as I do. Nausea jolts up my throat as I look upon the raw flesh, glistening with blood, looking so _soft_ , in the places where my fingernails have been. I swallow, incredibly glad about the absence of pain.

“Bellatrix.”

She steps closer too, her shoulder touching mine. She doesn’t look at me. I know what she must be thinking; I don’t need to guess. She’s one of those who would have punished me without hesitating, and she’s the one who would not have used _Crucio_ but the killing curse. Fortunately, my sense for control is back, and I keep a straight face.

“Your left arm, Regulus. The underside.”

“My Lord,” I say, my voice is hoarse and croaky, hardly audible. I lift my left arm with ease but I cannot peel back the sleeve of it with my right hand. I am horribly cautious of my lacking fingernails, and I avoid looking at them. Instead I touch the balls of my right hand to my left sleeve, my gaze on the Dark Lord. “I cannot…”

“Bellatrix.”

Her hands come up quickly. She pushes my right hand away and exposes the skin of my left underarm by pulling back the sleeve, rolling it up to my elbow. I think I hear a hissed, “You brat,” as she withdraws. My face stays blank. She could never lower me to her level; she has never before affected me in a way like this, and what she does now is ridiculous.

“My dear Bellatrix...” The Lord laughs. It reminds me of pain, and I shudder. It’s like the screech of a knife on glass. “You are a Black, but you _do_ seem to forget sometimes that you are of Rosier-blood, too. Proper blood it is, yes, but not as pure as his. Therefore, I shall and will not indulge in that behaviour of yours,” he says. His words are not threatening because they don’t need to be. “Do you understand?”

She goes completely still. It takes her a moment to say, “Yes, my Lord.”

“So be it.” He turns back towards me. “And now, Regulus: swear it. Swear it once more. Will you do, whatever I command?”

“Yes.”

“By all means?”

“Yes.”

There is a pause.

(Their eyes are back on me. Watching, aware, alert, taking in every moment. They are gluttonous, fat vultures, hungry for my corpse.)

Then, so softly, “Will you murder for me?”

My hands are cold. My heart beat slows. I feel each pulse more pronounced than ever, heavier, thicker, irregular, as if misplaced backwards in time.

“...”

“Regulus,” he repeats, eyes never leaving mine, “will you murder for me?”

My heart stops beating, briefly, only to begin racing.

I think of nothing as I answer.

“... yes.”

There is a sharp pain on my left underarm, and I know nothing more.


End file.
